


Mice, Crawling

by Yvi



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: gen_ficathon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yvi/pseuds/Yvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a dance, executed carefully. They dance around each other, never touching, always evading, and never leaving the dance floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mice, Crawling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the gen_ficathon for etoile_dunord's prompt "River's take on Book".

He watches her sometimes.

She also watches him sometimes.

It is a dance, executed carefully. They dance around each other, never touching, always evading, and never leaving the dance floor.

River hasn't touched his Bible since the incident. A week afterwards, she had found a copy of it outside of her room. It is a strange book and there is so much wrong with it. But she doesn't touch his old, musty version of it anymore.

From time to time, she reads in it. She remembers seeing it before, when she was small, but her parents didn't think much of it and it was one of the few books she didn't read. She doesn't understand how he can believe such obviously wrong things. He is an intelligent man. But she tries not to tell him that. Simon says it's impolite. Simon is usually right about these things.

He has secrets. His secrets are like mice, hiding in the walls, and you can hear them late at night, crawling around, if you only listen closely. But you can never see them. You just know they are there and that they come out when you close your eyes and disappear one moment before you open them again. You just know they are there.

They are big secrets. Big and dark and they keep him awake at night. River knows Serenity, even better than Kaylee, and she knows her crew. She can feel the ship and she can feel all of them. She can feel him being restless at night and his thoughts whispering to him of unspeakable things. They taunt him and make him toss and turn in his bed.

River can feel him from where she lies in her bed. And them, the secrets. But she can never listen closely enough to hear them. She tries to, she strains her ears, but they are always just out of reach, just one decibel too quiet for the human ear. River has heard of dogs - if she were a dog, maybe she could hear them.

There's also things she can see. His past is a dark color. A dark chocolate brown, like his eyes. Sometimes it is a dark red. River closes her eyes. She can see the color of his past in her mind.

He looks at her. She opens her eyes again and looks back at him.

Sometimes, he looks her in the eyes for a while. This time, he averts his eyes.

"Where does your God live?" she asks him one day.

"In our hearts," he answers.

River points to her heart. "Here?"

He nods. "Yes, my dear," he says and walks away.

An average human heart beats seventy to seventy-five times a minute. A female heart weighs an average of two-hundred-and-seventy grams. It pumps two-hundred-and-eighty liters of blood per hour, seven-thousand liters per solar day and two-million-six-hundred-and-eighty-eight-thousand liters per solar year.

There can't be enough space in there.

Simon says Book must have lost someone. Someone dear.

River looks at him and Kaylee and wonders whether Book had someone like Kaylee. But then she reaches out and the thought feels wrong. Book lost someone, but it wasn't his Kaylee. It was more, much more. And the loss and grief and pain is joined with guilt. It throws River back and she cries into her hands. She won't tell Simon what's wrong.

Serenity is peaceful, even through all that happens. Serenity is sincere and warm and welcoming. It helps her, it heals her.

And it helps Book, it heals him, even if only a little. Serenity does that to people.

A week before he leaves, she watches him from above, in the cargo room. She lies on her stomach and looks down and she knows he is going to leave. It makes her sad. River will miss him. And she knows it won't be good for him. He won't find that peace he so desperately wishes and longs for.

River can't tell him. It also won't help him.

River likes Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. She has it with people. If she sees where they are, she can't see where they will go. If she sees where they will go, she can't see where they are.

Books needs to go, be somewhere, live somewhere. Serenity is moldering him with her love. He needs to be free.

She doesn't comprehend why people think of birds when they think of freedom. She understands, but she doesn't comprehend. Birds are not free. They can't leave the planet. They can't dive. They need other living things to feed. No one is free. Book isn't. Captured in his own past, his thoughts, his memories, his pain.

River doesn't understand how he does it.

He looks up at her. The white hair is under control, it will not scare her again. The black eyes are different. They are soft and piercing, knowing and questioning, understanding and...

River rolls around, coming to lie on her back. The ceiling is not high above her. She could touch it with her fingers, if she just extended her arm. But that would take away the magic.

He leaves almost quietly. Mal pretends he doesn't care, he doesn't like preachers.

River knows Book isn't a preacher.

Inara is sorry to see him go. Kaylee hugs him. Simon shakes his hand. They all do something.

River just stands in the shadows, watching them. She doesn't know whether they will see each other again. It's the Uncertainty Principle again, only even more twisted. She knows she will see him, she just doesn't know whether he will be alive at that point.

River will miss him. Serenity misses everyone that once sailed with her. A ship needs its crew, all of it.

She waves as he catches her eyes one last time before turning around.

She spends the night curled up in Book's bed. He has taken all his things with him except for one. There's a page of paper lying under his bed. He has written "For River" on top of it. It's the story of Noah's Ark, annotated in her tiny hand-writing.

River sleeps with it tucked under the pillow.

Serenity will miss Book. River will soothe her.

END


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